One of the world’s most important private collections of Islamic art will receive the largest public presentation in its history next year when the Dallas Museum of Art inaugurates The Keir Collection of Islamic Art Gallery. The long-term installation will showcase over 100 works from the Keir Collection, including a substantial number of works that have never previously been exhibited.

Assembled over the course of five decades by the noted art collector Edmund de Unger (1918–2011), the Keir Collection of Islamic Art is recognized by scholars as one of the most geographically and historically comprehensive of its kind, encompassing almost 2,000 works spanning three continents and 13 centuries of Islamic cultural production—from rock crystal to metalwork, ceramics, textiles, carpets and works on paper. The Keir Collection came to the DMA on a long-term loan agreement with the trustees of the Keir Collection that was finalized in 2014, transforming the Museum into the third largest repository of Islamic art in the United States.

The Keir Collection’s first ever North American presentation, Spirit and Matter: Masterpieces from the Keir Collection of Islamic Art, opened at the DMA in September 2015. The new installation will increase the number of works on view from the collection, which will henceforth be presented in a new purpose-designed gallery space off the Museum’s Concourse dedicated to Islamic art. The new Keir Collection of Islamic Art Gallery will retain several important masterworks that were on view in Spirit and Matter.